Zin

Haritha Savithri (Author)
Haritha Savithri is a writer, freelance journalist, human rights activist and translator. She has translated Iskender Pala's Tulip of Istanbul, Samar Yazbek’s The Crossing and Ahmet Umit’s The Cry of a Swallow into Malayalam. Her book Murivettavarute Pathakal received the 2022 Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for best travelogue. Zîn won the Udya Sahitya Puraskaram 2023. Haritha Savithri lives in Spain and is pursuing research in English philology at the University of Barcelona.

Nandakumar K. (Translator)
NANDAKUMAR K. is a Dubai-based translator. His co-translation of M. Mukundan's Delhi Gadhaka
(Delhi: A Soliloquy) won the 2021 JCB Prize for Literature. His other translations include A Thousand Cuts, the autobiography of Professor T.J. Joseph, which won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award; The Lesbian Cow and Other Stories by Indu Menon; and In the Name of the Lord, the autobiography of Sr Lucy Kalapura. Nandakumar is the grandson of Mahakavi Vallathol Narayana Menon.

WITH A FOREWORD BY N.S. MADHAVAN

Seetha, an Indian national and a student at the University of Barcelona, arrives in Diyarbakir, Turkey, in search of her Kurdish lover Devran. Having just found out that she is pregnant, she is desperate to find Devran, who has mysteriously vanished.
Seetha discovers some disturbing truths upon her arrival. The state is trying to trap Devran and his family for alleged terrorist links. The region is in the midst of a harrowing conflagration, where state-sponsored killings, enforced disappearances, political vendettas and torture cells are the norm.
Seetha herself comes under surveillance of the Turkish security forces, who take her into custody and brutally torture her. In the scramble to rescue Sita from their clutches, many find themselves caught up in the conflict between the Kurds and the Turkish government.
Set against the 2015–16 Turkish repression of the Kurdistan movement, Zîn is a novel in which an ordinary love story between people of two different nationalities and cultures is flung into an unexpected, extraordinary political and historical setting. The pacey and emotionally stirring novel throws light on how governments reduce minority communities to a lower status and use them as a tool to seize power—a situation that’s become all too familiar across the world.